2.6: Budget Authority
Other Information:
"Budget authority" is a term of art for what probably should be called "spending authority." It's the power to spend money,
created when Congress and the president pass a law containing such authority. Proposed budget authority is pretty darn opaque.
The bills in Congress that contain budget authority are consistently published online -- that's good -- but they don't highlight
budget authority in machine-readable ways. No computer can figure out how much budget authority is out there in pending legislation.
Existing budget authority is pretty well documented in the Treasury Department's FAST book (Federal Account Symbols and Titles).
This handy resource lists Treasury accounts and the statutes and laws that provide their budget authority. The FAST book is
not terrible, but the only form we've found it in is PDF. PDF is terrible. And nobody among our graders uses the FAST book.
Congress can do a lot better, by highlighting budget authority in bills in a machine- readable way. The administration can
do much, much better than publishing the obscure FAST book in PDF. Ideally, there would be a nice, neat connection from budget
authority right down to every outlay of funds, and back up again from every outlay to its budget authority. These connections,
published online in useful ways, would allow public oversight to blossom. But the seeds have yet to be planted.
Stakeholder(s):
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